Evolutionary Games and Ecosystems (4)

Game Play Evolving

Emergence of the Law in a System under External Competition

Let us, for the sake of arguments, suppose that the world consists entirely of game players playing the game previously described. Assume that there are 10000 abductees who are confined to the infamous gulag of "KUT Game Theory Research Laboratory". They are grouped into sub-units of 100 members, and forced to play "Angel and Devil game" all day long among themselves, and receive the ration according to the their own payoffs.

Initially, in every group, the situation should be best described as "war against everybody by everybody", and all angelically inclined would die out quickly. Eventually, however, to avert the collective suicide, movements for survival by "everybody ocasionally playing Angel" have to emerge in several groups. Among them, those groups where social arrangement is agreed upon to enforce the right mixture of "3/4 Angel and 1/4 Devils" will thrive and collect all resources in the expense of unenlightened groups.
That arragement is rather fragile by itself against the appearence of any "free-rider" playing Devil among Angels. So, in order to keep thriving, the group has to develope policing institutions for their punishment, and those who fail to develope them would simply die out. Thus, out of competition for collective survival, we would observe the "evolution of social institutions" along with the eventual demise of "street smart" individuals.

Optimal Arrangement Rewards Aggressive Elements

Let us now look at the inside of successful group which has won the competition and thriving. Most people tend to be good at certain things and not in others. It might suite everybody's hobbit to assign certain role to certain people in semi-permanent basis than do it randomely each time. It would also be a tremendous administrative burden. There are chances of a group having bunch of incompetent people who forget and misplay their expected role. It might be advantageous to assign Devil to fearsom-looking 1/4 and Angel to the rest. that is to say, establish the division of labor. If you calculate the payoffs for both diabolic and angelic casts, it turns out that former command higher income because of the very rule of the game. Actual numbers are 5 Ruble for Devils and 0.5 Ruble for Angels.

This is the cost of class difference whose burden falls on the shoulders of angelic tribe, that has to be maintained to keep optimal arrangemnet for society as a whole, assuming the division of labor. To keep angels from defecting, police force would be used. And people should be hearing the lectures by moral (or "religeous") leaders who says "If your right chin is hit by a Devil, give him your left chin. This is a divine social order to keep us all alive.."

Although this imaginary research gulag sounds like an absurd joke at first, it somehow captures, in its simplified manner, a lot of aspects of our daily-life experiences in our society. We shall modify and extend this simple toy-model of society with three strategies "Do Nothing", "Peasant", "Kight", and shall observe that it resembles even more closer to the stressful reality of our social life. A foggy senario emerges that, based on people's desire to improve their collective lot under the "irrational game rule", the social role-division and class start taking their hold.